Military Update: Schools' Military Impact Aid Is On Political Chopping Block

Military Update

March 10, 1995|By TOM PHILPOTT Guest Columnist

As the Pentagon touts a new commitment to quality of life for military families, politicians are threatening to end a program seen as critical to quality education for service children.

On the chopping block is Federal Impact Aid, which for 50 years has pumped money into local school districts to offset the cost of educating children of military and federal civilians who work or live on nearby military bases.

Rep. John Kasich, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Budget Committee, wants to phase out the $728 million program. The Clinton administration proposes a $109 million cut next year, ending that part of impact aid linked to military students who live off base.

Both efforts have school officials on edge. Although impact aid has been under attack for years, said Sara Barnes, assistant superintendent for the Copperas Cove Independent School District, Texas, ``prospects of us saving it this year are more bleak than they have ever been.''

Copperas Cove, a bedroom community near Fort Hood, receives $5 million a year in impact aid, 17 percent of the schools' operating budgets. ``I've been laying awake at night, trying to think how we would handle the loss,'' Barnes said.

School officials are right to worry, said Rep. John E. Porter, R-Ill. He's chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee on labor, health, human services and education, which is responsible for impact aid funding. Porter also is a strong advocate for the program. His district includes the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, and nearby schools that rely heavily on impact aid.

But Porter said keeping the program alive will be difficult if Kasich and the budget committee turn thumbs down. ``We're very much afraid they're going to attempt to zero it out,'' he said. Kasich, leader of Republican ``budget hawks,'' has said as much to colleagues.

Porter said it will be tough to defend impact aid because 72 percent of congressional districts have no eligible schools. ``It isn't a matter of concern to them,'' he said, ``at a time when we're seeing all kinds of budgetary cuts.''

John Forkenbrock, director of the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools, said most lawmakers view the program as ``no different than an agricultural crop subsidy, something to keep somebody padded with money.''

Porter and Rep. Chet Edwards, a Texas Democrat whose district includes Fort Hood, plan to lead ``a whip operation'' over the next month to educate House members on the program. The first step will be a meeting with Kasich. ``Talk about huge, unfunded mandates,'' Porter said, in perhaps a preview of that discussion. ``We just passed legislation saying we shouldn't foist upon state and local governments federal obligations without providing the money. If we took away impact aid, we'd have the biggest federal mandate-without-money you've ever seen. ... Schools all over the country would go bankrupt. Military kids, if not physically excluded from the classroom, would be subject to harassment by classmates.''

Porter has seen it happen. A cut in impact aid a few years ago forced North Chicago Consolidated School District No. 187 into bankruptcy. Only an ``extraordinary $1 million appropriation'' from the state of Illinois kept the system going, he said.

Janet Barry, superintendent of the Central Kitsap School District in Bremerton, Wash., said the $1.7 million her district receives is ``absolutely vital,'' even though it's only 4 percent her budget. Surrounding military bases, she said, keep the community ``tax poor,'' not only because base property is exempt from local taxes but service people tend not to participate in local elections. With so many families sitting on the sidelines, Barry said, it's difficult to get taxes raised to increase school budgets. Any reduction in impact aid, as the military population there grows, will lower ``the quality of our education program.''

Many school districts will be far worse off than that, said Forkenbrock. Without impact aid, 150 districts could close. Others will try to send military students tuition bills, a move federal courts have struck down in the past. ``Our main concern is that children are being blamed for the problem,'' said Catherine Ahl with the National Military Family Association in Alexandria, Va. The NMFA has received complaints from families at Earle Naval Weapons Station, N.J., that children ``are being taunted in school,'' Ahl said. Last month, the board of education for Tinton Falls, where 400 Earle students attend school, agreed that the town should vote in April on whether to stop educating military children if impact aid is not raised.

Local ire won't ease if Congress eliminates the program. Tinton Falls taxpayers, said School Superintendent Louis Iannicello, will have to cough up another $1 million.